


Azeyma, Beloved in Her Light

by celestial_txt



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Blood and Injury, Corruption, Extreme misuse of primal creation, F/M, Find your lost love? Create a religion in her imagery, Heart-Eating, Human Sacrifice, Non-Graphic Violence, Oral Sex, Recurring death of a man who cannot truly die, Stabbing both consensual and not, Tempering (Final Fantasy XIV), Unhealthy Relationships, Vaginal Sex, When you love her so you turn her into a primal-goddess, Worship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:49:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27763285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestial_txt/pseuds/celestial_txt
Summary: To love Azeyma is to burn in her fire, to be seared into her heart and kept.As he prepares to usher in the Third Umbral Calamity, Emet-Selch comes across a familiar warrior named Azeyma praying at Nald'thal's altar.
Relationships: Emet-Selch/Azeyma, Nald'thal/Azeyma, Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch/Warrior of Light
Comments: 14
Kudos: 61





	Azeyma, Beloved in Her Light

**Author's Note:**

> _I have left  
>  My strong identity, my real self,  
> Somewhere between the throne, and where I sit  
> Here on this spot of earth._ \-- From _Hyperion_ , John Keats

Thanalan wasn’t always a desert.

Once it was lush, not arid; flourishing with plants and trees, shaded boughs under a soft sun, the soil fertile and ripe. Forests grew, rivers curled through the lands, and the people of the land sacrificed in sweat, tears and blood at altars to silent gods.

Thanalan was beautiful once, before his hand disrupted the delicate balance.

And Azeyma was not always a goddess. Once she was nothing more but a sell-sword, come to beg a god for favor. If only he had not listened to her prayers, perhaps the records of history would be more complete. Perhaps he would have spent less time incinerating them with careful precision.

Perhaps she would be remembered in her true, horrid splendor, the burning terror of the sun descended upon the earth.

There are many stories told of Azeyma in the ages that have passed, and yet none remain who know the depth of the truth. None save Emet-Selch. Nor does he tell the story to anyone, not until the Warrior of Light’s eyes unfocus in front of a candle flame as she drags her fingers through the top of it.

“I had a dream the other night,” she says with a distant voice. “In it, I held a pair of scales and weighed the world.”

His gloved hand pulls the candle away from her, annoyed. “You will not be holding anything if you burn yourself, least of all that sword you are so fond of wielding.”

She smiles, in that knowing smug way that she mirrors off of him and that she knows gets under his skin. “So you have been watching me fight.”

“At least it is entertaining.”

Her eyes are still on the candle’s flame, entranced in a way that rings eerily familiar.

“Drawn to the fire, are you?”

She shrugs. “I guess. I was born under the sign of Azeyma, after all.”

Now that draws a knowing smirk from him. “And yet you know nothing of the truth about Azeyma.”

Her eyes rise to meet his, the red of her irises deep like blood. At this moment, she looks so much like the goddess of the sun, the candle’s flame highlights the sharp angles of her face as her dark hair falls in loose curls. “You should tell me instead of taunting me.”

* * *

In ages long past, buried beneath the rubble of calamities and fallen empires, gods walk among mortals, a pantheon in the making by Emet-Selch’s hand.

To the people of the land, he is known as Nald’thal, a dual god of death and trade, the inevitability of death and taxes that which persists through all ages. His temples have stood the longest, though none alive now remember but for him. He alone remembers the first laid bricks, and the names of the workers whose hands built them, their eyes brimming with gratitude as he sent them to the lifestream. A life of service rewarded with death. How pathetic. What was it all for? A false god. Nothing more.

Yet a part of him yearns to be there as well. A part of him hungers for rest. The Ardor, however, churns ever onward. Duty waits not.

And memory, the cruelest mistress of all, does not spare him either.

It always goes like this. He finds a shard of Azem and he is filled with too much hope, too much loss, and his hunger gets the better of him. Yearning is cruel like that, and when she finally re-appears it is like seeing a light crest above the darkened horizon again.

She comes to his temple one morning, staggering alone into the great hall. Silhouetted as she is against the sun, he cannot make out her face, but she drops to her knees before his altar, offering her sword upon it.

“I pray for the souls whose lives I have taken,” she says, her voice clear and sober. “I pray for their good afterlife. I pray that they find their way into a new blessed life.”

Ever the good one. Always forgiving. He smiles to himself as he emerges from the depth of shadows, the dark cloth of his robe billowing from his movements. “Do you regret your actions?” he asks, voice drawling.

She winces. Clearly, she expected to be alone, to address an empty temple, and wash her hands of guilt without witnesses. Instead, she has caught the eye of the very god of death himself. She bows her entire body to the floor, blood-stained hands flat against the flagstones. “I did not come here for me,” she says. “I came here for them.”

“Pretty words.” He takes her by the chin and tilts her face up. Her cheeks are dry, her orange eyes sharp. “Your blade is caked with their blood, however. You think your actions just?”

“I know they are.”

He pushes her tangled hair out of her face, the touch stirring an ancient thing in both of them. They did this once before, long ago — _on a beach, not long after the last fires of Amaurot had been quelled, and she left the Convocation, harsh words in both their mouths and a twisted angry love rotting between their hearts —_ only hers is weaker, frailer. She does know how to name it, yet she parts her lips and gasps at the contact, reaching for his wrist without permission.

Already she takes what she wants.

He lets her.

“What is your name?”

“A sinner like me is not allowed a name.”

His laugh echoes in the empty halls. Yes, she is a sinner. She has laid hand on a living god without permission. She has spilled blood and refuses to apologize. By all the rules of the land, by all that is considered holy in this constructed pantheon he has concocted, she is a criminal. And he does not care.

He pulls her to her feet. “What is your name?” he asks again, still smiling.

“Azeyma.”

“Tell me, Azeyma. What do you know of how gods are made?”

Her eyes widen — not with fear, not exactly — but with _hunger_.

She is but a shattered, broken fragment of the Azem he knew, weak and frail and disgustingly mortal, but he has yearned for this.

He never planned for her to be part of the divine pantheon. Her return is always on the precipice of his hope wavering, of his dedication faltering. How can he not cast her as the role she has always been meant to play? How can he deny her? He will pay for these sins for a long time to come, no matter how elegant his divine plan is. It is a price he is willing to endure.

It will turn ugly. All divinity do.

And it is exactly what she deserves.

To create a god, all you need to do is pray. To fill a breathing human with purpose and prayer, well, not much has to be carved out. All she needs to do is endure.

She does it so well. The flames lick at her skin, the heat burning her tears before they even hit her cheeks. Sometimes, while she is being forged, she looks at Emet-Selch as if she remembers him. It makes him cruel. It makes him push her harder.

He has been wrong before. His judgement does tend to cloud near her. Perhaps this time, he will find a way to remake their fates.

In his hands, she becomes Azeyma, reborn goddess of the sun. As he places a necklace of red crystals around her throat, it is the chains of destiny tying her to a terrible future. He is nothing if not dedicated to her.

Myths bend so easily when told enough times. Even as the last stones are laid at the foundation of her temple, her devoted followers sing her name louder than any other god’s, proclaiming her returned to them. In a way, she was lost, yes — but not to these masses. They know _nothing_ of what they missed.

The radiant goddess of the sun wanders a temple lit up with eternal fires, her red dress dripping with golden accents sewn for her body by Nald’s blessed tailors. She is so radiant, her lips dabbled with red and fingers painted black. She is blood and she is heat. She is the sun’s scorching warmth.

Every day, prayers fill the sanctum, and mirrors angle the sun’s rays into every chamber of the temple, no room left untouched by her brilliant light.

The altar at the center drips with blood. The sun has barely warmed the cool sandstones and her feet are already covered in red. Azeyma walks through it, partaking of the rites, touching the self-flagellating sacrifices. Her hands burn them like fire, sear their wounds shut when they have offered enough. This is the strangest thing about her as a goddess: she takes, yes, but never more than what she needs. They all fall to their knees and thank her, not knowing that each prayer, each drop of faith invested in her, is building towards their very own undoing.

Her temple will be her home. Her temple will be her tomb.

Yet Azeyma fixes Emet-Selch with her burning gaze, the lie already curdling in her mouth.

In the darkness of the night, long after both their temples have grown quiet, she sits with him on the bank of the river, shredding rose petals with her restless warrior fingers. Her stance is still that of someone who wields a sword and not delicate scales.

“What are you doing to me?” She stares out towards the other side of the river, towards the cities that glimmer in the distance.

“You are ascending, dear. You should revel in it. Instead of being the one who prays, you are who they pray to. Do you not feel it filling your veins?” He holds out a rose in front of her face and she snaps her teeth, ripping off the petals and spitting them out, glaring at him.

“It’s a lie.”

He sighs, rising to his feet. “You have so little faith.” He extends his hand to her, and she glares at him with poorly concealed disgust, but she takes it. The temptation to know what he knows overwrites everything else with her, always. All he has to do is _offer_ , and she will come to her own ruin.

They wander out into the rose fields, the sharp thorns catching on the delicate silk of her dress and lacerating her shins. When they reach the middle of it he takes her by her shoulders, her skin burning to touch. It requires so little to draw it to the surface: the fire that hungers. The fire he has imbued her with.

Reaching into her, touching her soul, is always a risky thing. “There. Do you feel it? It’s all yours.”

She shakes her head, resistant.

“You never were this fearful of what you could do back in Amaurot.”

Her breath trembles, the gates of the past unlocking and flooding into her. How little it takes, sometimes. Just a simple word. A city long lost. “You remember the spires gleaming in the night, don’t you? You remember the streets when it rained.”

Her voice trembles, the burden of a life not hers and yet _all hers_ sinking in. “I remember the unholy fires that razed it. Our sins—”

“Made manifest, yes.” He digs his fingers into her skin. “It is all there. Ripe within you. Take it.”

A spark shoots out from her fingertips and the field is set aflame, smoke floating in the air, the sweet fragrance of fire and roses wrapping itself around them. Amidst the fires she turns to him, her face lit up by the destruction surrounding them, and for a brief moment, she is no longer Azeyma, and he is no longer Nald’thal.

She cups his face tenderly, the rough sword calluses on her hands scratching his cheeks. So many lives lived. Yet only one matters to him. “I remember you now.”

If he could pry her open, force it out… Would it break Azeyma?

And does Azeyma even matter to him?

He can see it, the stirring in her soul, the shift in colors that grow brighter. So close. So infernally close.

A stray cinder lands on her cheek causing her to flinch in pain. The spell breaks and he sighs, resting his gaze on the black spot burnt into the skin just below her eye. He could be merciful and heal it away, but he finds it charming. A mark to remember the blazing field by.

In the distance, the songs praising Azeyma and Nald’thal are drowned out by the crackle of flames. A goddess who is bound, and a god who worships her.

Yes. He is her most admiring worshipper. He gives to her, even in his role as Nald’thal, a god sacrificing to another god. In other worlds, this might have been heresy. In his heart, it still is — another god made its home in him first, a god that does not share. A god that tempered him and that made her turn away, long ago.

Azeyma is a feral goddess sometimes, mostly when Emet-Selch is a liar, and especially when he enters her temple with defiance in his gaze and chin held high. It’s always a challenge he poses and she sees it, seizes it, though she does not understand the full extent of it. She does not understand the question, but she feels the call of the answer.

It is almost good enough for him.

Azeyma greets him like gods greet each other, but in the embrace where their devoted cannot hear them she is filled with accusations. “Liar,” she hisses between smiling lips. “You are not my Nald’thal. You keep another god in your heart where I alone should be.” She presses against him, cupping his face between her hands. “Who is this god that commands greater fealty than me?”

He cannot name it. No. _He does not want to_. Part of him seethes that she does not remember, part of him is relieved. Either way, he yields nothing to her on this matter and it drives her hands to terrible cruelty, fire licking across his skin in razor-thin trails.

She cracks him open, in the darkest of nights in her quiet temple, and she breaks him apart little by little. She knows something she cannot voice, a familiarity where she is on the edge of something different.

She is jealous. Long after she is done ruining him, his body a wreckage of her just hands, she sits staring up at the moon. She loathes it, and he cannot blame her. She may be the sun in his life, but Zodiark… Well. Azeyma cannot compete. She is only a lesser tool.

And he is but an impostor in the house of a goddess. It is as close to the truth as he is willing to go.

She rips the head off another rose, taking the stem and weaving it together with others until she has made a crown of thorns.

“You are not a god,” she says finally, turning to face Emet-Selch. “But you are my Nald’thal.”

“Then what am I?”

She sneers. “I do not know. My impostor. My liar. My criminal. I do not know you. Not yet.” She places the crown upon his head, pressing it against his forehead until the thorns break his skin and blood drips down across his brow. “But I will. This I promise you, liar.”

He laughs, blood trickling into his mouth.

It is she who makes the first move, just as before, and when her lips meet his, when she kisses him deep and hungrily, he remembers _everything_ he had hoped to forget about her. The way she sighs when he touches the back of her neck. The way she has fast fingers, parting the layers of his toga, finding her way to the sensitive spots of his body. The way she pins him down and pushes away his hands, how she wants to be in control.

“Tell me your name,” she demands, raking her sharpened nails across his bare skin, his blood on her mouth from kissing him so deep and hard.

“No.” He will let the question fester in her until she feels ready to punish him for his crimes, and he will take it happily, eagerly, _he will_ — and the fire, oh, the fire she commands. The fire that burns. He feels the tempering of Zodiark waver, for a brief blissful moment in the crucible of pain that is her hands on him.

She lowers herself onto his cock and snaps her hips hard, another wave of pain rippling through him. She is merciless and he basks in it, smiling up at her radiance.

He wants her, has always wanted her.

Her kisses taste like wine, and he drinks from her lips greedily, hungry in a way no mortal that walks this earth can imagine. They have known nothing, lost nothing. He has lived for thousands of years already in this broken husk of an existence and she is here, sharded and shattered and pitiful in how meek and soft she is, but she is his now.

There is precious little tenderness in how she fucks him, sweat dripping down her body, the muscles of her torso glistening in the candlelight. She is still more warrior than holy. He runs his fingers down her abs, and she slams his hands down hard enough to crack the small bones in this mortal shell. Pinning him down, she cages him in, breathing heavily as she rides him. Her eyes darken, her hair falls like curtains on either side of his face. All he can see, smell and feel is _her_.

“You will be mine,” she says, her teeth grazing his jawline as she comes, biting down on him. She does not care to wait for his release, shifting so she is sitting on his face, pressing her thighs into the crown of thorns wrapped around his temples and yanking at his hair as he laps at her cunt, licking her clean. He strokes himself as he does, coming in a mess on his own stomach, and all she does is dig her nails into his scalp hard enough to hurt.

It is as he deserves. In her loving hands he is burned free, for just a moment, surrendering to the fire that seethes within her.

When she is done with him, she leaves him on the floor, uncaring. He tries to catch her by her ankle, but she sidesteps his hand smoothly.

Oh, how she treats him like dirt, like _nothing_. It drives him wild.

A human made divine vessel, a primal leeching from a beautiful soul. He has created his own torment. His prayers were always like this, too fervent. Creation is a terrible crime and he commits it daily in her name. She is a goddess, yes, and he is a god of pretense at the end of the day. Everything is created and everything is destroyed.

Azeyma, discontent with the myth he has created of her, remakes herself in the light of the sun. She is not as merciful as he wrote her to be, but people still flock to her throne, begging for her judgement.

She hates him because she has seen what he will do to her temple one day, and yet she welcomes him when he comes, she kisses him and undresses him with the dagger she keeps at her hip all the time. She uses it only on him and herself. It is a kind of blessing how sharp she keeps it, every morning as he rises from her bed she is sitting there with the stone sliding against the edge that gleams in the low candle light.

A promise of what he will endure with her. A promise of what she can do to him.

These are the moments when the fire of her touch burns him free, just for a brief moment. Her fire pushes back against the tempering that has woven itself into him, that will always be a part of his soul now. She brushes against greatness. She shows him a freedom where he is hers.

He loves her the way you can only love a goddess, in an annihilating sort of way, but the annihilation is that she cannot stop, cannot cease, the fires burn eternal in her temple and the blood stains the floors red. She hungers and she hates it, he sees it in her, but still she demands and demands and she looks at him, hands stained with sacrifice, and accuses him of all the sins she knows he has committed — many of which he hasn’t done under her loving hand, and even more he hasn’t done yet. She sees his future and it is terrifying what awaits him.

“I condemn you to another lonely, unloved thousand years. You will not know love then. You will not know me.” Azeyma, goddess of the sun, a sun that burns so bright that his skin sears, and she scores red nail marks into his back, proclaims him hers.

A hunger is a hunger and she is ravenous, she drags him back to her altar and shoves him across it, she is inside of him and breathing down his neck. Her accusations are true. He did sacrifice her once. And never will he do it again.

But does _she_ understand?

Sometimes… The veil parts and she is just a human, tired and worn, her body burning with heated blood and fire, and she presses her face against his neck and asks what he will do to her next.

“In the next life. What happens to me then?”

“I do not know yet.”

“I do.” She spits the words out angrily, but her eyes are unfocused. “You will take me to a lake. You will build me a home there and keep me safe for seven years. Not a day longer.”

“Only seven?”

Her fingers swirl the smoke drifting through the room. “Seven heavens, seven hells. It is your curse to break everything good you build. It is your curse to break us apart, again and again. It is your curse to never be recognized by me.”

It never was this terrifying with Azem. It never felt like the end of the world each time they kissed. He does not know which one he prefers, and that alone makes him fear in a way he has not known fear since she was sundered.

In their mutual dance towards destruction, their rituals evolve.

“What do you know of death, Azeyma?”

“I know how to inflict it…” She toys with a flame, letting it move between her hands as if it was a pet. Magick has taken so well to her, aether filling every fibre of her being. She glows, even when he closes his eyes, the warmth that radiates from her like a sun he cannot turn away from. “And I know how to bless someone with it.”

“Yes yes, but what do you know of what comes after?”

She stills her hands and looks at him. “That is your domain, impostor.”

He takes her by the wrist and snuffs out the flame, turning her hand over to kiss her knuckles. “Would you grant me the sweet taste of death?”

Her breathing catches in her throat, a flutter of fear passing over her normally serene features. There it is. Underneath all the divinity resting upon her shoulders, she is still mortal, still thinks that the line between death and living matters _to him_. It does not.

“Have you not thought of it? A punishment to fit the size of my crimes?” He plants kisses up the length of her arm, keeping them soft even as he lingers at the pulse points, drawing in deep of the perfume oils she is anointed with, the myrrh and musk intoxicating.

“Do I even know the full extent of them?”

He smiles against her skin, scraping his teeth over her shoulder. “You do not.”

“So many horrible, unnumbered crimes. So many terrible things you have done.” She grabs his collar, holding his face at level to hers. “So many horrible things you will yet commit.”

“Playing at knowing the future is a cursed game at best, my dear.”

“Have you ever gazed into the fire and seen what awaits? I have. Every day I see what you will do. Every day the horror of your future unfolds before me.” Her fingers tighten, eyes narrowed. “What you will do to me.”

He does not care about these futures. It annoys him that she does. They don’t matter, not really — they are just threads of lesser worlds, lesser lives passing by like flies. He wishes she would look back, to understand the past she springs from. To understand who she is to him.

Every day she disappoints him.

At least she acquieces to his request for death.

Nald’thal ascends to kneel at her feet and it is a ritual game they play well. Their followers know what comes, their prayers growing louder. The story they have been told Nald’thal must be split for the balance to be made whole. Nald must rest, in the Underworld, among the dead. He must attend to the balance.

He has asked her for it more and more recently: the sweet chill of death to wrap around him, and the sweet touch of her sending him there.

She lets him have this indulgence. It is the greatest mercy she grants him, a respite from the living.

She raises the blade, and her followers mirror her movements over his disciples: a tribute of criminals and liars to follow him down. The sacrifice offered by Nald’thal and his followers unto the bloodied steps of Azeyma’s temple to usher in the changing of the season. Baskets of the season’s harvest line the halls, ripe red apples and golden wheat, the bounty of the land offered as thanks to Azeyma, and as gifts for the dead.

From where Emet-Selch rests on the altar, pinned down between her thighs, he can see the shiver of fear passing through her. Despite all her loathing and hatred of him, all her questions and disgust at his refusal to show her the full truth, she still cares about him. She still fears that he is just as mortal as she is.

“Who is the real impostor?” he asks, hand on her thigh.

She brings the kris down into his heart, not the throat they had agreed upon prior. He does not mind. Not really. Oh, it _hurts_ , it does, but she is so beautiful with her eyes wide, with his blood spattered on her cheek. A haze overtakes her as the death of Nald’thal’s worshippers fills the air, the surge of aether feeding the primal-goddess she has become.

She dips her fingertips into the pool of blood on his chest and paints her lips with them. As his vision of her dims, she leans down and kisses him.

“I will not mourn you.”

Oh, she is a liar too. How lovable she is to him. How easy it is to be a genuine worshipper of Azeyma when she behaves like this.

If he wasn’t so weak, he’d tuck the stray locks of dark hair behind her ears. He’d tell her how beautiful she is in this moment, her body bursting with power she can barely wield much less control.

The sun will turn, the seasons will churn, and then he will come back. She will reign supreme for six months before he returns. They are myths in the making.

The cycle of the seasons repeat, despite how the harvest withers some years from the intensity of the sun, how the grass burns and wildfires spread. It all depends on how well Azeyma can balance the fire within her. The more people that fall to their knees and pray to her, the harder she struggles, the brighter she burns.

Each year he spreads himself on her altar, her truest follower, her most devoted champion. Each year he recites the prayer, _I entreat you, Azyema, for the blessed rest only your hands can bring me. I beg for your mercy, beloved goddess, to send me to the Underworld. My duty calls me away from you._

And she replies, voice rough from smoke, _Beloved god, cruel is the season that comes and takes you from me, and cruel of you to ask this of me. I will allow you this, but return to me always._ The edge never dulls in her gaze, the silent threat laced with a messy declaration of love.

Each year she drives the blade through him, sharp and terrified. She still doubts that he will come back to her, though she only grows more beautiful as she grows older, the wrinkles on her face charming. He knows the weakness festering underneath it, yes, but the slow fall is a beauty to behold, the decay a part of the cycle. She will live for a long, long time still. He will not let her go that easily.

Each spring he returns to her, stepping into her temple as night falls on the equinox, and she alone greets him.

“My promise kept,” he says, falling to his knees in reverent prayer, ready to shoulder the role of Nald’thal again. Ready to play this divine game for one more cycle. “I always return to my only goddess.”

So he prays to her, with his hands and mouth, on his knees and between her legs. A seething goddess stoking fires yearning to be unleashed, barely kept at bay.

He undresses her slowly, sliding the dark red robe from her shoulders. Underneath she is clad in golden chains that connect from her neck to her nipples and down between her legs. An exquisite offering from his followers, the way the chains and jewels drape over her thighs, how they sound as they shift under his hand. She is adorned, and she is chained.

He bows his head and sucks in her nipple between his lips, looking up at her with a half-lidded heavy gaze. She is already wet when he puts a hand between her legs, the golden chains splitting into two right above her clit and running on either side of it. The links are soaked, and he falls to his knees to lick them clean.

“Each winter grows longer,” she sighs, curling her fingers in his hair. He looks up at her, noticing the white hairs at her temples, the lines deepening around her mouth. “I am tired, Nald’thal. When will you take me with you?”

“Not yet,” he murmurs, pushing her back onto the throne. He cannot let her go. Not yet.

It is a kind of supplication. She wants him, and she wants his true name, but names are just names, titles to be worn and discarded, masks to be wielded and forgotten. It does not matter for the truth to be between them still, unspoken and unutterable but persistent nonetheless. Her soul still rises to the call of his. With all the aether in her temple, she burns brighter than Azem did at times. Terrifying to behold, and lovely too.

To love Azeyma is to burn in her fire, to be seared into her heart and kept.

She comes on his tongue, crying out the only name for him that she knows, and while her knees are still weak and shaking she reverses their positions so that he sits on the throne and she straddles his lap. His fingers find her clit as she guides him into her, and they both groan out in pleasure as she sinks down onto his cock.

She rides him, supported by his hands, his face nestled against her neck. He clings to her, pulling on her hair, wanting her closer. It is never enough, no matter how her hot skin presses against his cool one, no matter how hard she bites him or how sharp her nails are.

What more can he sacrifice to her? Only himself.

“Don’t leave me again,” she whispers. She covers his mouth, not wanting to hear his answer that she has already heard too much — that _it is I who should worry about you leaving, dear —_ because she struggles to believe him. A part of her buried deep knows him already, all too well.

She shudders in his arm, the fire wavering in her eyes. For a vulnerable moment as she comes, she is only human. Horrifyingly _mortal_ , still, despite all he has done, despite all he continues to imbue her with. He closes his eyes and rests his forehead against hers. He knows he should be honored that she at least trusts him enough to be like this with him, even as churches are built across the world to pray to her.

He should be grateful. He wishes he was.

One spring he returns and Azeyma has left her temple empty. The priests know not where she has gone, but he does not need their help. Vain of her to think she can hide from him. The trail of her through the world is ash and charred remnants, a path easy to track. Where she walks, the ground burns.

At the edge of the world, alone on a beach, he finds her.

“There you are.”

“Here I am.” Her feet are covered in sand, the robe she wears still wet from the waters. Her eyes are fixed on the horizon painted in a burst of oranges and purples as the sun sets, almost disinterested in him. “Before you, I could go wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I did not have to concern myself with all these trappings.” She tugs at the red crystal necklace around her neck, the chain unbreakable.

“So you are unhappy.”

“Me? I am _nothing._ You have created me into the image of someone else. A thing that burns and devours. Is this truly godlike?”

He sneers. “Do you remember who you were before I uplifted you?”

“I was a mercenary,” she laughs, hollow. “And to you — a supposed god of death — what does that matter? But it was my life, and it was not perfect or wholesome or even beautiful at times, but it was good to me. I fell asleep at night with my body exhausted and my mind only concerned with the immediate future. I left my offerings at the temple doors and never ventured inside. My life was mine to live.”

“It was not.”

“Shut up. I’m growing older, yet you, you never seem to age.” She holds up her hand, showing him the back of it, the wrinkles on her fingers. “I have so many questions and you never answer them.”

“Ask them then, if they matter so much to you.”

“What is your real name?”

He could say it. He could dampen the ravenous fire that licks at her consciousness, that burns inside of her. It would be so easy to simply give her this little morsel. He crouches in front of her, hands clasped together. “At the end of all of this, I will let you know.”

It is the best he can give her, and it is not enough.

“Why do I remember a city I have never been?”

He says nothing. He holds her face, cradles it in his hands.

“What is the Underworld like?”

“The lifestream.” He pauses. “It is like a river between the stars. Pure. Nothing can corrupt it.” And how he yearns for it, yearns for the rest contained within it. It is never enough before the pulse of Zodiark beats in his soul again, before the tug of duty has him awakening and resuming the Ardor. “Not like this world has been.”

“What did you do to the world, love? What more will you do?”

“The answer will not please you.”

She grimaces. “There you go again. I know what you think of me. I know how you judge me. No matter how strong I grow, no matter how easily I can rend the land, you find it disappointing. You look at me and you are looking for someone else. Don’t think I don’t feel it. Will I ever be good enough for you?”

“One day.” Though for now, he has had enough.

He brings her back to the temple with a snap of his fingers, guiding her to the cleansing pool at the entrance and kneels into the water to wash her feet. She watches him. She hates him.

It is a price he is willing to pay. _Not yet, beloved. Not yet_.

“Nald’thal… How could you do this to me.”

“Love, Azeyma. Love.”

“Your love is a terrible burden. I do not want it.”

And yet he is hers. She has drawn the chain around his neck and tightened it. If he runs it will snap and break his neck. A horrific construction.

Where would he run to? He knows other gods would be horrified at her. She is the terror of the sunlight incarnate.

_Keep burning me, love. Keep peeling me apart._

_Perhaps one day you will succeed_.

* * *

As she grows more powerful, the tempering of Zodiark grows weaker. Never fully removed, not entirely, but he has longer stretches of time where he can see clearer. Azeyma’s cleansing fires grow stronger as he stokes them, urging more devotion into her open arms, urging the prayers to be sung louder.

All the while she is chained to faith, his freedom grows. He comes closer and closer to who he was before they even needed to raise their hands in prayer to summon Zodiark.

It is a dangerous game he plays, one that is entirely selfish. One the others must never know about.

But oh, how it fills him to be torn apart by her hands and set free.

He makes himself into an eternal sacrifice upon her altar, urging her to partake of him everyday, his blood staining her feet, her robes, her hands. His offering of himself in her temple has turned him into a ritual under her hands, another body for her to use. Still Nald’thal, sometimes, but his real title rests on the tip of his tongue, tempting him. (In the back of his throat his true name rests, never truly swallowed and kept away, but never let loose either.)

In her hands, he is doused in her love and flames.

She makes him pray to her as she fucks him, but it is a betrayal he cannot commit earnestly. He can give her of his body, yes, but never his soul.

Still her name falls from his mouth like a prayer. His hands run up and down her body, tracing the progression of the years, the old scars of her past life before godhood still as bumpy as the day she came to his temple. Now he is the one giving her succor. Now he is the one lost in her splendor.

She ties him to the altar, a different kind of hunger flashing in her eyes.

“What is the name of the other god you keep?”

He smiles at her, fully intending to goad her hand. He wants to see her rise to the challenge he poses.

The dagger she keeps moves in slow, precise lines, carving lines of magick into his skin that burn. It is excruciating. It is delicious.

And it makes him confess. “My god wanted you and I handed you over. I held the sacrificial kris and I raised it above your chest.”

She does not look up from her work, curving the blade under his chin. “So you truly are horrible.”

“I did not let you be taken. I only sacrificed you.”

“Does that make it better?”

“Your feeble little mortal mind does not understand how this works. Your soul returns eternally, and in your case it is inevitable. You die, you rest, you are reborn. I envy you.”

“What is his name?”

When he does not answer, she pries him open, cracking his ribcage. The pain is unfathomable. The pain is cleansing.

There she is. Terrifying and feral and almost entirely _primal_ , a goddess beyond what anyone could imagine.

She wraps her long fingers around his heart, and he notices how they are becoming more claw-like by the day as power pours into her, corrupting her vessel. A mortal was never meant to contain godhood, only be subsumed into it.

Sinking her teeth into his heart, he can feel her taking him into her, taking of his power. It is so little, just a mouthful, and yet the ground beneath them trembles, the roar of the eternal fires causing people to cry out. How frail the world is, how weak to shudder at this.

She bites down. Feral, horrid, lovely. His head swims with what he has done to her. In another time, Azem would judge him. In another time, he reminds himself, _Azem would know him_. Azeyma knows _nothing_.

How good she is. How well she moves on his chessboard, towards her destined Calamity.

When he comes back to her alive and well the next morning, she looks at him, exhaustion lining her features. The magick of his constant return has grown dim.

“One day I hope you tell me the truth.” She brushes her hair slowly in front of the polished bronze mirror, touching at the greying strands. There is not much black left now. “You must know, surely, that all your lies have led us here.”

Corruption is a slow thing. Gods as primals ask so little at first. But none of them are truly immune to watching their worshippers dwindle in numbers. Empires rise and fall around her temple and she seethes, the sun burns the lands and what was one lush valleys and orchards turn to sand and dust. Still she hungers.

She needs and needs. It is too much for the Star to contain. Already he can see the outline of her fall. The veil that parts the shards from each other are thinning, another becoming ready to collapse back into the Source.

The stars are falling into alignment. It is time. The fire is too much for Azeyma to contain.

How well she fulfills her part of destiny. How well she rises to the occasion to destroy everything when asked to.

When she kills him, he does not return. Not for years.

When he does, she has marched on Oschona and Menphina, purged their temples and burned the churches. “There will be no places to worship that aren’t ours,” she proclaims, clinging to him as he fucks her while she still wears the golden armor of a war goddess bent on destruction.

They are the only gods left alive on Eorzea now. The Ardor does not rest, but he has her to himself.

“What have you done?” he asks, stroking her grey hair.

“They were lies. Liars. Worse than you. Unbending, unloving.” She spits the words out, pacing in front of the fire at the heart of her chambers. The temple reeks of ash and burnt flesh, charred corpses lined up outside the stars.

“So you took them.”

“I cleansed them. Do you know how good fire is for that, hmm? Of course you do. You must.” She clasps his face in her hands and her eyes are shifting, changing. Red motes float in the orange of her eyes, dappled with gold flecks.

She has become so different. She has devoured the pantheon. In his hands, she has become the perfect weapon to usher in a new Calamity.

And he sets her loose. The world is set ablaze, the work of a century comes to fruition.

* * *

All the other temples ring hollow and empty, but hers sings with fire and warmth as people flock to her, fearful of how she has lit the world aflame.

Her rituals have changed so much. Her followers fall for her, tempered and hollowed out, and none of them interest her. All she wants is to burn.

At night, the smell of smoke thick in her hair, she turns to him and asks: “Are you proud of what you have wrought?”

“No. Not this time.”

By the time it is over, she is more monster than human. Her heavy breath fills the empty halls of her temple, the rustle of metal with each move she makes.

It is time for him to come and extinguish her. She has earned it.

_Azeyma, love, it has gone too far._

Clouds blot out the sky the day he comes to her temple. No army stands against him in this form, drawing upon all the ancient magick he holds within himself as he sweeps the land into an eternal darkness.

“Azeyma!” His voice bellows through the temple, the stained glass windows shattering.

She knows it, and she refuses to hear it, she sinks her teeth and claws into him, she calls upon her malformed creatures that claw their way out of the fires, she fights him tooth and nail even as the cool of his touch creeps into her and quenches the heart of the fire that seethes within her.

Azeyma falls to the ground and crawls away, lessened.

He finds her alone, in a forsaken courtyard still untouched by her corruption. She is so small and fragile and _mortal_ , as if all the magick that has extended her life has forsaken her. Or she has released it.

A frightening thought.

Her shoulders shake as she tears at the gold still on her body, prying the chains off one by one. Her hands are weak, but she catches the locks and undoes them, letting the gifts of old fall to the floor around her.

“Remember when I came to your temple to pray?” She looks at him, clear-eyed. Like when she came to him the first time. “I lied then. I wanted to pray for my own soul too. For you to be kind to me in the afterlife.” She tilts her head up towards the sky, thick raindrops hitting her soot-stained skin. “What will you do to me in death?”

So he tells her a truth. “I do not know where you will go. You do not belong to me anymore.”

She laughs. “I never did, did I?”

The roar of the released fire has grown louder, sweat beading on her forehead as she shivers.

“Do you feel it, love? Do you feel yourself growing whole?”

“I feel nothing. Only hunger.” Her eyes dim as she sinks to the ground. “No one prays to me anymore, Nald’thal. Why is that?”

He kneels down over her, stroking her cheek. “You took them all. You consumed, as you were made to do.” Loosening the dagger she has used on him countless times from its sheath, he sinks it into her chest. “Rest now, love. Your temples will be razed. Your memory will be revered. It will be as it must. Forgive me.”

“I can never…” She draws a final, shaky breath. Her eyes are unfocused. “The lifestream… It is not a river, love. It is a road. A beautiful road.”

He rests his head on her stilled chest as the fire devours them both.

* * *

Azeyma’s temple is swallowed by the desert in the aftermath of the Calamity.

Emet-Selch spends the centuries afterwards scouring the truth from the written histories, crossing out the most terrible deeds written down about her. All the other gods can be remembered however vile and unforgiving, but all that Azeyma did… She deserves better.

 _May you be remembered as softer than I made you_.

He returns to the temple, now a tomb best left forgotten, and descends through the ruins. The mirrors are shattered, the walls defaced by vengeful adventurers and the chambers picked clean by looters.

On her broken altar, he places a single red flower, the velvety petals the same that she used to love.

“May no one do unto you again what I did here.”

* * *

Emet-Selch tells the story of Azeyma to the Warrior of Light as they sit on the edge of a lake, the scar of light she inflicted on him aching in the middle of his chest.

She pokes her fingers at it when he is finished, a wry smile playing at the edges of her mouth.

“So will these be our seven years?”

He runs his fingers through her hair, whitened by the rampant light that surged through her body not long ago, now gone. “Time will tell, won’t it?”

She rolls her eyes, pushing him down onto the sand and kissing him, her hands softer than Azeyma’s, more decisive than Azem’s.

She pinches his skin. “I can tell you are comparing me. Stop that. I am _me_.”

He tugs her down to his mouth. “That you are.”

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Stef telling me about her idea of "Azeyma, reborn goddess of the sun and her unholy consort lurking in the shadows" as well as reading the Final Fantasy wiki and getting hung up on [this entry about the Third Umbral Calamity of fire](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/759488752518955100/782341605810110494/Screenshot_2020-11-28_at_21.26.02.png). 
> 
> _“I had a dream the other night. In it, I held a pair of scales and weighed the world"_ taken from [Sevdaliza's song Rhode](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwjlVlLAyds) that I listened to on repeat while writing this.
> 
> My twitter is [@celestial_txt](https://twitter.com/celestial_txt) & [my carrd](https://celestial-txt.carrd.co/) is here.


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